🕡 6:30 PM – 7:15 PM – Val Huet
The therapeutic relationship in art therapy: New Paradigms
The past two decades have seen exciting developments in evidence-based practice in psychological therapies. These innovations, such as Mentalization-Based Treatment, have significantly improved our clients’ lives and emphasized the importance of attachments, and the impact of trauma on people’s ability to make and sustain relationships. There has also been a paradigm shift in the therapeutic relationship that acknowledges the importance of systematically seeking feedback from our clients on their experiences of therapy. This is also echoed in a growing awareness of how power dynamics, and issues of diversity, can affect therapy.
In this presentation, I will reflect on how these developments have influenced and changed our perceptions of the therapeutic relationship in art therapy. The role of art in building a therapeutic relationship will be considered through art-viewing and joint attention, processes that play as important a role as artmaking in art therapy, I will refer to the ‘Power Threat Meaning Framework’ (Johnson & Boyle, 2018) as supporting a bio-psycho-social and cultural framework that helps us understand the diverse roots and expressions of distress. I will also consider how art therapists can support clients who have connected with art through art therapy and want to develop their artist identity as a positive and creative response to experiencing adversity.
About the speaker:
BA Fine Arts (Sculpture), Diploma Group Psychotherapy, MA Art Therapy, MA Organisational Consultancy, PhD in Psychology. Dr Val Huet qualified as an Art Therapist in 1986. She later trained as a Group Psychotherapist and Organisational Consultant and completed a PhD on art therapy groups for work-related stress. Currently, she is involved in several research projects, including a Randomized Controlled Trial on Arts Therapy Groups for people with mixed diagnoses, and a pilot of online art therapy groups for people with chronic pain.
Dr Val Huet was the Chief Executive Officer of the British Association of Art Therapists (BAAT) from 2003 to 2021. She is co-director of the Oxford College of Arts & Therapies, an online training organisation. She is a Visiting Professor on the MA in Art Therapy at the University of Hertfordshire and on the MSc in Art Psychotherapy at Ulster University. She is the Honorary President of the International Association for Creative Arts in Education and Therapies (IACAET).
Dr Val Huet lectures internationally and publishes regularly. She has been a lifelong passionate advocate of art therapy and continues to share her enthusiasm and passion for her profession.
More recently, she authored the Amazon bestseller Boarding School Syndrome: The Psychological Trauma of the ‘Privileged’ Child (2015), which features a comprehensive case study in art psychotherapy, as well as The Dying Patient in Psychotherapy (2020).
